One of the joys of research is touching the original records of our ancestral families. I have done this and also worked on microfilms of some records many times onsite at the U.S. National Archives locations in Washington, DC, College Park, MD, Boston, MA, Chicago, IL, Kansas City, MO, Denver, CO, San Francisco, CA, and Seattle, WA. No two locations are alike in many ways, but a big similarity is that they all have records just waiting for our family history searches.